


The Oppressed, Rising

by winged



Series: Optimism in Heavy Boots [1]
Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1980s, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Punk, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, F/M, Gen, HIV/AIDS, Homelessness, M/M, Multi, Musicians, Past Child Abuse, Poverty, Queer Themes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-19
Updated: 2014-02-12
Packaged: 2017-12-23 23:52:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/932560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winged/pseuds/winged
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>He had been drunk and stumbling and bruised, shoving and falling and being shoved, circling and dancing and not knowing the words, just letting the anger in them flow into him and wash away. And then he was letting himself tumble into the circle and Enjolras had grabbed him by the shirt, face inches away. He had found himself still, staring into the cold blue fire of his eyes: this wild animal, this avenging angel screaming “</i>stand up and be counted, stand up and be counted<i>,” into his face before shoving R back roughly into the crowd and circling into another direction.</i></p><p>The Abased are maybe not the world's most notable hardcore band, but they're serious about standing up against the complacent, capitalist, idealized society of the mid-eighties and their friends are too. </p><p>Well, the friends that aren't drunkenly ranting about how idiotic this whole thing is, or busy with a crush on some random girl. </p><p>But the rest of them. Yeah.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Stand Up And Be Counted

**Author's Note:**

> This combines canon from the Brick and from the musical in some kind of weird goulash that hopefully works.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Enjolras was everywhere -- throwing himself against the crowd, careening into Combeferre’s drum kit, down on his knees howling as if his heart would break, as if the words tumbling too-fast from his lips were a purgation._
> 
> In which Enjolras has a new mission, Grantaire has something to prove, and Marius has way too many feelings.

“I heard something about the Hotel getting cleared out,” Enjolras says out of nowhere, and there’s a simultaneous darkness and excitement to his tone that quiets the room.

The whole group has taken over the back room of the Musain as usual, and as usual it’s so obnoxiously loud that it’s amazing they don’t all get punched. Combeferre and Courfeyrac have been stabbing their fingers into a newspaper and letting a conversation that started out as yelling about the Gulf work its way to _budgets_ and _style_ and _complacency_ and _what do you expect when people vote for a movie star_ for what seems like hours while their lead singer sits steeple-fingered watching them like a tennis match.

Jehan, always a poet, had interjected at some point with a deep-set metaphor about Icarus, and stopped to write it down because the government falling burning into the sea is admittedly a pretty good image. Joly’s fussing over Bahorel’s broken hand in exchange for some sex advice, with Bossuet, lounging on him going through the classifieds. Feuilly is actually being productive, slicing record sleeves out of a pattern printed on paper he stole from work and passing them to Grantaire to glue.

Grantaire is drinking bum wine and talking about how pointless everything they’re doing is: “as if you think this country is even capable of change; as if you think they’re not laughing at us right now; we’re just a bunch of nobodies determined to destroy ourselves and we get the spectacular privilege to choose to enjoy doing it or go kicking and screaming. You don’t get it, they don’t even NOTICE us, we aren’t even worth talking about.” But he’s gluing, and if at one point they found his dissent discomfiting, now it’s white noise: it would be upsetting if it stopped being there.

But even Grantaire’s persistent complaining stops when Enjolras speaks. He’s the frontman of The Abased for a reason; his voice has a clarity and an intensity that can make everything else feel a little less worthwhile.

The Hotel is sort of a catchall term; the place is, technically, a hotel, but in reality it’s just a cheap place to stay for however long its many residents end up there. The part of town it sits in used to be pretty terrible; now years of a persistent art scene and corresponding shops growing up around it has attracted a much wealthier crowd - one that isn’t as tolerant of the junkies, starving artists, queer kids, desperately ill and just generally desperate people that crash there.

 “Yes,” Combeferre volunteers: his brother, his lieutenant, and by no accident the stabilizing force of the band behind Courfeyrac’s infectious brightness and Enjolras’ cold furor.  “It’s under new ownership, they’ve been saying there were a lot of code violations, but you know it’s because it makes people uncomfortable. The last of the residents got shoved out yesterday.” He shakes his head and starts, “People live side by side for so long, you think they’d start to see each other as human, but...” He hits the edge of the table with his palm resignedly.

“It’s a crime,” Courfeyrac mutters.

“So, it’s empty,” replies Enjolras ambiguously, and Bossuet offers,

“From what I hear at the gas station they won’t be starting refurb for another week or two.”

“Likely picking the best rehabbers in the city. They want high rents. If this were about violations, no one would be getting evicted. But I’m sure everyone in the neighborhood will applaud at the consideration. After all, those poor, poor people, in those terrible conditions --” His voice drips with sarcasm. “Soon we’ll be hearing about how dangerous this influx of homeless is.” His eyes blaze. “Courf, ‘Ferre, what do you think? Think the neighborhood could use a few new tenants in the place? Say -- tomorrow?”

Combeferre does a mock drumroll on the table and says, “you say the word, chief,” and Courfeyrac just looks pleased. “I’ll get my people there.”

Enjolras is in his element now, striding around the table, authority falling easily into his tone. “Good. Feuilly, we need more fliers.”

“I can get them printed.”

“Joly, Prouvaire, Bahorel, Bossuet -- we have to spread the word quick if we want people to show on that kind of notice. Get your friends there. Get your enemies there. Anyone who’ll listen.”

Jehan grins over the top of his notebook. “Don’t we always?”

“I do count on you,” Enjolras says seriously.

“And me?” Grantaire asks, leaning on the back of a chair and smiling humorlessly at their leader.

“I _don’t_ count on _you_.”

Grantaire clasps a hand to his chest and pretends he’s been shot, staggering backwards a step. “You should try it sometime.”

“Do you show up _just_ to mock me, or is it also because Joly will know what to do if you get alcohol poisoning?”

“I come here every day and every day I listen to some new plot to get us all thrown in jail, on the off chance that you get to tell a bunch of bored kids that are there in the hopes of fucking burning everything that they should be building from the ashes. And this is my reward for such complete patience?”

“You know, you can leave if my -- naivete -- is that annoying.”

“You _are_ a beautiful idiot,” Grantaire says with a head tilt. “I don’t want to leave. I want to help.”

“What sort of help could you offer, public intoxication?”

“Tell me what to do.”

Enjolras presses his lips together and regards him dubiously.

Grantaire persists: “Look -- the fact is I know this scene as well as any of you and I can make friends with fuckin’ -- anybody.” He gestures wildly. “You want the art school, the bars, the publishing houses or the boxing rings -- let me walk to 60th if you need it - I can do it.” He grips Enjolras’ shoulder. “Joly, Jehan, Feuilly -- they’ll bring their crew. Let me bring mine.”

“I don’t know why I’m doing this, and I don’t know why you’re even here...”

“You won’t regret it!”

“I’m giving you one chance.”

“Thank you,” Grantaire says more softly.

“ _One._ ” Enjolras stabs his finger into Grantaire’s chest and shakes his head, stepping out of his grasp.

 

Grantaire -- R, more often -- knows first hand about bored kids interested in burning things down. His introduction to the hardcore scene was not, like Courfeyrac, a way to make a political affiliation at odds with his name; like Feuilly, the long-delayed discovery of music that spoke to him on a personal level; or like Jehan, sort of a natural conclusion to hanging out with poets and zine-makers.

It was something new to do.

R is a bee: he flits from hobby to hobby like flowers, picking up bits and pieces on his way, but rarely staying long. School for him was a farce: he had gone on to secondary education because it was what you did, not out of passion or any particular self-confidence in the idea of having a future. Now a junior with four majors half-completed, he is even less inspired than when he began to “just pick something”, some random lucrative concentration to struggle through so that he could get a job and a picket fence and end up happy and complacent. That future doesn’t exist, not for him, and the work it would take to pretend it did seems, far from a good decision, like a quick walk off a short bridge. All of school does, but it would be a waste of time and money to just quit, so until he failed or died there he was.

There were benefits to having taken half the classes in the manual though, and that was knowing things: where to go, who to hang out with, where to get cheap drinks, who would let you in for free. If his educational history was a nightmare, his social life was a dream -- a pretty hazy one of random drugs and stranger’s houses.

Then one of those parties had these bands playing, and well --

Nothing shut up the buzz and worry of R’s brain altogether -- art helped; drugs helped; sex helped when he could get it -- but throwing himself headlong into a crowd, screaming out his frustration and clawing, punching and dancing in a mass of equally desperate, angry bodies was the best thing he’d found to shut out the world for a few hours.

 He isn’t sure who had invited him (some friend of Bahorel’s, Bahorel is friends with everyone); if he’d been there to see one or another band, where it had even been. What he remembers is his first glimpse of this slender beautiful boy striding into the circle, hair haloed by the overhead lights like some kind of deity, pausing just for a moment before fucking exploding.

Behind him, the bespectacled, sturdy boy he now knew to be Combeferre kept persistent time on the drums; Courfeyrac had been steadfastly attacking his guitar: Enjolras was everywhere -- throwing himself against the crowd, careening into Combeferre’s drum kit, down on his knees howling as if his heart would break, as if the words tumbling too-fast from his lips were a purgation.

(R still wonders, sometimes, if they are. Enjolras is so quiet sometimes that it terrifies him. He knows what _he_ keeps locked inside and never says; Enjolras is a different universe.)

He had been drunk and stumbling and bruised, shoving and falling and being shoved, circling and dancing and not knowing the words, just letting the anger in them flow into him and wash away. And then he was letting himself tumble into the circle and Enjolras had grabbed him by the shirt, face inches away. He had found himself still, staring into the cold blue fire of his eyes: this wild animal, this _avenging angel_ screaming “ _stand up and be counted, stand up and be counted_ ,” into his face before shoving R back roughly into the crowd and circling into another direction.

It had changed something. R wasn’t sure what, but the next time he found out they were playing he went out of his way to go see.

He'd found out a few things:

They called themselves ABC at that time, but no one knew what it stood for (three concerts in, he’d heard “Aggravated By Corporations”, “Abandoned By Capitalism”, that it was a reference to how essential their message was, and that it was the only chords they knew; Courfeyrac will tell anyone who asks these days that even they didn’t agree on it).

Yes, that was a Courfeyrac of _the_ Courfeyracs, with their conservative political legacy and shady business ties, but ask him about that and say goodbye to your teeth. They’d all gone to some prissy charter school for rich kids together, and some of the kids at the show were -- like most of these shows -- of similar heredity, but their core fans, who R quickly fell in with, seemed pretty evenly split up.

They got called “fags” a lot opening for bigger bands, especially because Enjolras’ delicate looks, long hair and occasional military jackets weren’t exactly the aesthetic of this crowd. Usually that ended in Enjolras kissing one of his bandmates and flicking off the audience.

Confusing that was the disappointing revelation that Enjolras and, possibly, Combeferre, but not Courfeyrac (“I like fun?”) were straight-edge in a very big way. R suspected if there was a radical, judgy viewpoint to have, Enjolras had it. They had at least one song that was a bitterly spit condemnation of any mind-altering condition as a distraction from rising up against oppression, and another that strongly implied that buying drugs was merely fueling the war on them. R thought it was pretty dumb, actually.

He thought the whole idea of calling people to rise was dumb, but somehow it didn’t make him like them less. On the contrary, every time he went he found himself screaming along even if the ideas coming out of his mouth seemed foreign and bizarre. He had come to these shows to be forgotten, to forget -- now all he wanted was for Enjolras’ gaze to find him again, to be the one who knew all the words like Bahorel and Bossuet and all the others who he found himself colliding into time after time. The trusted few.

Now as he walks toward the art school, he wonders if he wasn’t fucking things up as always trying so hard to be seen; if escaping Enjolras’ notice completely would have been easier.

 

“Marius!”

Marius looks up to see Courfeyrac crossing the quad in long strides. It shakes him out of the half-trance he’d been in; he wasn’t really thinking about where he was going so much as just walking.

“Courf’,” he smiles at his friend. He’d come here a year and a half ago with nowhere to stay after a fight with his grandfather had gotten him kicked out of the house, and Courfeyrac had offered him a place to crash.

Not that he had wanted to stay there anymore. He’d discovered that his father was dead -- recently, not for years as had always been explained to him. For months it had consumed him, finding out who his father had been, his political ideals, why he’d been hidden from Marius. He’d been poor, a strike against him already as the Pontmercys were a rich family; he was drafted into the war in Vietnam and came back ill and even more jaded with the government than when he left. Marius’ grandfather had told him that if he never showed his face in town again, they might send him news of his son, and as Marius grew up he had only ever known his father had died overseas. Until he found the obituary.

It had radically shifted his outlook on -- everything. He’d already grown bored and rebellious with the outdated, stale views of his conservative grandfather; he was already being told “you’d make a good lawyer” as some sort of backhanded insult when he played devil’s advocate. This just gave him a reason, a legacy to defend, an extra shot of betrayal-fueled rage. It had ended in screaming at each other and ultimatums.

So he bought a ticket out and ended up here, reading law textbooks in some sort of homage to his dead career, working odd jobs and refusing any sort of help his family could possibly hold over his head. Courfeyrac had immediately adopted him, but for almost a year now he’d been living on his own in a tiny room in the Hotel. He was barely able to pay the rent or eat, but he preferred it to months of - in his mind - owing Courfeyrac for the space.

Now that was done.

“Pontmercy, you’re alive,” his best friend exhales, draping himself over Marius’ shoulder. “I haven’t seen you in forever.” He squeezes at Marius’ arm experimentally. “Do you eat at all anymore? Jesus.”

“Mm, yeah.” Marius isn’t quite paying attention. It’s not fair, he knows; he misses Courfeyrac, but right now he’s scanning the lawn. She has to be here today. She’s here every day.

“Not that you, y’know, missed _me_ or anything...” Courfeyrac rolls his eyes.

“I’m sorry, Courf.” Marius turns. “I do. Miss you. Actually...” Part of him hates the idea of owing anything more to Courfeyrac, who has been so kind to him for no real reason he can think of, but as of yesterday he has nowhere to live. He trails off, troubled.

“So who is she?”

“What?” Marius feels like he just got bowled over by a wave: he scrabbles for purchase. He hadn’t said anything out loud, surely. “Who?”

“You lived with me for nearly a year and I’ve never seen you so OUT of it. Either you came around to pot as a study tool or you’re in love. So who is she? ...And say it quietly, because there are at least twelve girls I’ve been telling you’re celibate.”

“I...don’t even know her name,” Marius says helplessly, and buries his face in his hands.

Courfeyrac bursts into laughter. “Never stopped me,” he tells his friend sincerely.

Marius looks up to roll his eyes at him, all too familiar with having to go find something to do for two hours at eleven at night or pretend that he sleeps on the couch.“Really? You? _Hiii gorgeous, I’m Courfeyrac I hate money let me spend it on you have I told you about my band I’m great at_ fingering _\--_ ”

Courfeyrac shoves him, laughing. “Jealous.”

Marius lets himself be pushed, stumbling sideways into a bench and letting himself fall into it overdramatically, grinning  “ _\-- ignore that guy he’s just my roommate -- he won’t notice a thing --_ ” he waves a hand in faux dismissal.

“If you cared so much you should have said something,” Courf grins, leaning down toward him on the arm of the bench. Marius blinks at him, the idea of intruding in any fashion on Courfeyrac’s life -- any more than he already has -- something foreign and bizarre. The idea of being asked to is even weirder. He’d accepted Courfeyrac’s shelter gratefully but had never considered that he might be wanted.

Now he stares up at Courf’s bright eyes and doesn’t know what to say.

“That’s her!” is what he finally comes up with, because at that moment is of course when he catches a glimpse of the girl unmistakable in his peripheral vision -- of course -- him half folded over the park bench and Courfeyrac barely restraining laughter. He does a half back flip onto the grass and Courf perks up, standing.

“Wait -- who? That tiny gothic chick with the old guy?”

“She’s not _gothic_ ,” he complains, scrambling to his feet and dusting himself off, though of course he has no idea whether or not she is. She’s wearing black; she always wears black. Today it’s a black velvet dress edged in lace, dark stockings and matching ankle boots; her hair is flowing pale and free around her shoulders. Maybe she just likes the color. Or she’s completely aware of the contrast it plays against her skin and straw-blonde hair, which he feels like she must be.

“I don’t think that matters, anyway,” he says fervently. He decides then and there that he’d still love her if she were a goth. Even if he has to listen to The Cure or something.

“So you don’t know anything at all about Wednesday Addams over there is what you’re telling me.”

“She comes here every day. We’ve seen each other a few times now. I sit, she sits. She watches me. We’ve done this stupid thing where we find reasons to walk close to each other. She’s just -- she’s always with her...father? Grandfather?”

“Sugar daddy,” Courfeyrac muses.

Marius is suddenly pissed off at how blase his best friend can manage to be about everything on earth and whirls on him. “Shut up. I’m serious about this.”

“Jesus, I’m sorry, did I offend your soulmate? You don’t know anything about her. You don’t even know if she’s legal. She could be thirteen.”

"She’s not thirteen.” He doesn’t know that. Well, okay, he does, but only because he’s pretty sure most 13 year olds don’t have curves like that. Oh god, he’s going to jail. “I’m so screwed,” he tells Courfeyrac. “You’ve got to help me. I don’t know how to talk to people. Yesterday she bumped into me -- ”

“What?”

“She walked nearly straight into me. Dropped all her books. It had to have been on purpose. You think? I helped her pick them up...”

“No, no, this is good, what did you say?”

“Um. I said I was sorry?” Marius cringes.

“You’re hopeless. You could have said hello, or asked her where she was going, or commented on her reading material...”

"That guy was there, and anyway she’d never gotten that close to me, I kind of got...flustered.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, you are twelve years old. Do you want _me_ to say something?”

“No!” He exclaims it sort of loudly and squares his shoulders, ruffling his hair. “No. That’s horrifying. No, I just. Need to. Man up or something.” He watches her for a second. She’s laughing at something that was said and gesturing back with her hands as she talks. As he stares, she gestures to the air in front of her and stretches wide, spins and continues down the avenue walking backward; the turn gives her a chance to glance around the quad casually. Before she looks back up to the man talking to her, she catches Marius’ eye meaningfully, giving him a small amused smile as if they share a significant secret.

He raises a hand slightly in dazed acknowledgement. He knows there is no real possibility of “manning up” in any way: she has this game rigged and all he can do is try to keep pace and not fuck up her plans too badly.

"I’m _screwed_ ,” he tells Courfeyrac again.

“You really are. Fortunately, I am never unprepared.” Courfeyrac digs in his satchel and pulls out some scrawled-on paper. “Be at the basement of the Hotel tomorrow night. We’re playing. Invite the girl.”

“I can’t just invite her, I don’t know her, I don’t even know how to talk to her,” Marius fumbles. “Anyway, does she look like she’d even be interested in some punk show? She wouldn’t survive those crowds.”

“That girl would survive a war without blinking. She’d probably have caused it.” Marius isn’t sure if that was meant to be an insult or a compliment coming from someone like Courfeyrac, but it doesn’t matter because his best friend is forging on before he can protest. “Leave it in her mailbox or something. Write a note on the back. Something like, Do you like me. Check yes or no. XO XO heart heart heart Marius That Stalker Kid.”

“I’m not sure if that’s a great idea or really offensive.”

“I do my best.”

“I don’t even know where she lives.”

“You’re not a very good stalker, are you.” Courfeyrac smiles affectionately. “Come back with me to practice and we can hang out? I’ll even let you ramble about your girlfriend.”

“She’s not my girlfriend. Anyway, Enjolras hates me.”

“‘Ras doesn’t hate you, he thinks you’re too smart to believe in our electoral system.”

“I forgot, he hates _democracy_.”

“He hates _plutocracy_ ,” Courfeyrac says back immediately in a tone not far from Marius’ declaration that the girl _wasn’t gothic_ , “and anyway this is a representative republic, not a democracy.”

This squabble is one they’ve had since about the time Marius moved here and decided The Abased’s mutual distaste for Carter as a lame duck was somewhat offensive to his (admittedly mostly based on his father’s politics) liberal sensibilities. It doesn’t bother him much anymore, but he’s not sure he wants to have it again with Enjolras, who’s a little more intense than Courfeyrac.

“I’ll pass for now,” he says, “but I won’t miss the show. I’ve gotta cash my paycheck before the Cash Express closes anyway.”

“Rad. See you tonight, then?” When Marius looks puzzled, Courf says, “come on, dude, I’m not stupid. I figured out you were living at the Hotel like six months ago. You need a place to crash, right?”

“I’m fine on my own; I’m not _homeless_.” He’s pretty sure his voice doesn’t sound as confident as he wants it to, considering that yes, he actually is. He snuck into his work last night and slept on the break room couch, and there’s even a microwave and cups in there if he wants to make ramen, but after a few days he’s going to have to figure out a place to take a shower or someone’s going to notice.

“I haven’t even moved your mattress,” Courfeyrac says patiently, putting his hands in his pockets. “Stop being stubborn. Come home.”

Marius sighs and stretches his fingers, irritated both at his own lack of self-sufficiency and at the warm feeling Courf’seasy _come home_ sends through him. He’s never grown up with money as an issue, and now living on his own it’s been a point of pride: turning down his grandfather’s money on principle, eating ramen and regluing his shoes. But now he’s out of quick fixes, and this time Courfeyrac isn’t just diving in headfirst: he’s lived with Marius before, and he’s offering anyway as if it weren’t even a question. He’s never had anyone do that; the people from his childhood rarely cared genuinely for each other, much less someone who needed their help.

Doesn’t Courfeyrac see how paralyzing it is, knowing that he has a friend, a home, and yet that Courf could -- probably _will_ \-- someday get tired of Marius and his constant awkwardness, his stubborn political views, his prudishness -- his lack of rent? Part of him wants to run; knows he can ignore this like he has the whole situation with the girl, with the Abased and their friends, with his grandfather even. The other part knows that’s cowardice.

“I swear, I’ll pay you this time --” he finally says helplessly.

“Obviously,” Courf says with a brisk nod, waving a hand in dismissal. “So. See you tonight?”

“Yeah.”


	2. Preconceptions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _His city, all of it; even the metro feels like it runs straight through his veins: he can’t help but love it fiercely even when he wants to rip it apart, spit on its beauracracy, shake its citizens by the collar. You don’t fight for things you don’t love._  
>   
> 
> In which Eponine isn't waiting for Marius and Enjolras most certainly is not thinking about Grantaire.

If another person calls her ‘baby’ today Eponine is going to light them on fire. She’s been standing on the corner for a little over two hours, and she’s been propositioned four times and catcalled more than she wants to count. She’s not sure what about a tank top and oversize jeans says “sexy” to them, but she’s not in the mood. Her dad’s out of jail, and she doesn’t have a house, which means she’s got to get her shit together fast before he comes up with some new stupid plan that involves her.

Maybe she should have taken someone up on one of those propositions. She thinks it probably wouldn’t have ended well for anyone involved: she can pretty vividly envision herself biting someone’s dick off and that seems like it wouldn’t get her paid.

 _Anyway,_ she thinks bitterly, _as soon as I took off my clothes they’d run. No one wants to see that._

Especially not her downstairs neighbor, which begs the question why she’s casually hanging out pretending she’s not waiting for him to show up. He does, though, every Friday, and usually she can get a conversation out of him, a two sided one where he actually listens to what she has to say. Maybe that’s a little pathetic but it makes her feel good.

She spots him coming out the door and heads for him so it looks like she’s been walking. “Marius! Hey.”

“‘Ponine!” he waves at her. “I like your hair.” She’d dyed it in the sink almost a week ago, but Marius is oblivious to everything, so the fact that he notices it’s not brown anymore is a pretty huge statement.

She beams. “Thanks. So...going this way, Monsieur Marius?”

“As it happens.”

“What a coincidence.” She proffers her arm and he laughs and takes it for a few minutes as they walk.

“So what prompted the green?”

“I got bored. I don’t know. Do you -- ever feel like your insides and your outsides don’t match right? Like, you look in the mirror and you’re just staring at a stranger?”

“Maybe,” he answers thoughtfully. “Yeah.”

“Yeah, I don’t know.” She stretches her shoulders as if actually constrained. “Sometimes I feel like there’s so much inside me that no one can see. Like if no one expected anything, if no one knew a _thing_ about me, I could be fucking amazing -- you know? but everyone just looks at me and sees what they want to.” She shakes her head. “I guess it’s probably stupid dreams, but I want to be ...myself, not anything anyone knows about me.”

“You can,” he says with feeling. “Don’t let anyone tell you you can’t get away from that.”

“Maybe.” She knows that it’s a little bit bullshit, that Marius like everyone else sees her with preconceptions and baggage; maybe with more compassion, or less in terms of what she can do for him, but as much as she loathes them she’s never been afraid of most of the people in her life pitying her, and she’s always a little unnerved by the possibility that Marius does.

It’s nice of him to say, though.

“I mean it,” he says, as if he can tell she doesn’t believe him. “I guess it’s not the same, but getting away from my family was one of the best decisions I ever made.”

“It’s not that different, in the end. I’m not talking about being poor. I’m talking about expectations. And that’s what you were getting away from.”

He nods. “Yeah. Exactly.” He trails off a little. At some point they must have relaxed, because she doesn’t have her elbow at a gentlemanly angle anymore, and his hand is just sort of resting on her wrist. She can’t imagine it’s comfortable. It’s definitely a little weird, and also precious in the same newborn giraffe way that Marius just _is_ , and she doesn’t say anything because if she does it might stop.

They both turn toward the Hotel, but Eponine refrains from mentioning that too. If he wants to walk her to a place that is no longer home, he can do that.

Marius must notice, though, because he suddenly frowns and shoves his hands into his pockets. “Ponine...do you have a place to stay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Because I know Courf wouldn’t mind if you came -- “

She laughs a little at the idea. “Mind? Courfeyrac, in all his benevolence, would probably be _thrilled_ to have another person on his floor, but like I said: I’m fine. I definitely don’t need you offering for him.” Courfeyrac means well, but she can only deal with his totally earnest philanthropy in small portions. Anyway she’d hear jokes about Marius bringing her home all night, and his brain is so far from ulterior motives right now it’s depressing.

“You’re so stubborn. It’s getting cold, you know? And I don’t want you getting hurt...”

“I’ve been _cold_ before, Pontmercy.” She laughs. “I do hear the Hotel is going to have some new occupants tomorrow...”

“You know about the concert? I was going to tell you.”

“You don’t have to tell me things. I have ears everywhere. The streets whisper me secrets.”

“...Right. What else have you been whispered lately?”

“Plenty.” She shrugs cockily. Marius might laugh, but Eponine learned long ago that it suits her needs to keep her ear to the ground. It wasn’t from any family member that she found out her dad was back on the street, and she hasn’t been surviving this long by waiting to keep herself fed and clothed. “Why, is there something you need to know?”

Marius answers her by squinting into the distance, and Eponine pounces on it like a cat. “I’m good for it. Secrets, scandals. Blackmail, bribery. Death threats, but that’ll be extra,” she adds with a grin. When he doesn’t laugh, she elbows him. Marius is admittedly solitary and secretive on the best of days, but this is different. “Dude. What’s up? You can tell me, you know I’ve got nothing to judge.”

He turns and looks so fond that she almost blushes. “I know. Thank you, Eponine, you’re a good friend.”

“Yeah, yeah, great. So I gotta cap someone or what?”

Marius laughs aloud at that. “No. Definitely not.”

“I would, you know.” She’s sure he doesn’t know how fiercely she means it. This stupid, pretty little boy a fifth again her age, who won’t do anything illegal even to keep himself fed, who once gave her mother what had to be most of his paycheck in cash because she told him some sob story -- who listens to her ramble about the way the river looks at night when she hasn’t eaten in two days and he’d rather be studying. She wishes she had the sense to stay the fuck away from him, because people aren’t nice like this, they _aren’t_ , not to people like Eponine, not without wanting something; but he wants nothing, he doesn’t even want _her_ , and the things she would do for him anyway despite it shame her.

“You’re ridiculous.”

“A little, yeah.”

“You should go to the Abased show with me.”

Eponine blinks at him. “Um. Okay.” To say asking anyone to go with him somewhere would be out of character is perhaps an understatement and she isn’t sure what it means, but her heart doubletimes. She tilts her head at him and decides to follow this where it leads. “Okay, yeah.”

“Yeah?” He beams. “Great.”

“Are you gonna pick me up and everything, Pontmercy?” She manages a half-smirk, expecting him to laugh at her at any moment.

He quirks a smile back. “I would, if I knew where you were sleeping.”

She furrows her brow at him and impulsively, stands up on tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. “You’re confusing, Monsieur Marius.” He looks back at her, surprised. “Meet me at the Hotel.”

\---

Enjolras is in his own head. Right now what that means mostly is that the rhythm of his boots on the pavement are providing a good measure for hashing out lyrics ( _does_ gone _work as a rhyme with_ done _?),_ but it’s not an unusual state for him. Even now with words weaving through his mind, he’s taking in the city, the columns and marble interwoven with thoroughly modern, mirrored monuments to a new, more moneyed kind of hero.

He absorbs it without comment, the architecture that could convince anyone they could become a legend, the impatient car and foot traffic of men in suits that are trying to become that, the bored college kids, the homeless people shaking cups. His city, all of it; even the metro feels like it runs straight through his veins: he can’t help but love it fiercely even when he wants to rip it apart, spit on its beauracracy, shake its citizens by the collar. You don’t fight for things you don’t love.

Beside him Combeferre is matching pace as the sun throws long shadows in front of them.  They’ve long since run out of fliers and change, so the intense little conversations both of them were starting with friends and passersby every so often to encourage them to come to the show tomorrow have stopped, and so have their meager contributions to panhandlers. They’re just walking.

Enjolras is subconsciously aware that striding along briskly with someone else in complete silence is a little bit unusual, but it isn’t bothering him. If he were with someone else, Jehan or Joly, Bahorel, any of their friends, he might feel pressed to speak his thoughts aloud, but ‘Ferre and Courf are something else, not friends exactly. More than that. Part of him. Kith.

They are, all three, part of a system. Organs in a body; not good at functioning alone but capable of being much greater than themselves together.

And so he knows that Combeferre won’t find it weird if he doesn’t talk, just as Combeferre knows that his compulsion to examine every bookstore window will go unremarked upon by Enjolras and just as they have both found themselves having long conversations with total strangers because of Courfeyrac.

Which is why it surprises him when Combeferre says, “You’re thinking about R.”

“What?” Not only is it a bizarre thing to say, but he’s lost in thought, and Combeferre, so matter of fact and so often right, makes him suspicious of his own thoughts.  “Lyrics, actually,” he informs his drummer.

“Okay.” Combeferre smiles mildly and pointedly doesn’t say anything else.

“Why would I be thinking about Grantaire? Why would you even _think_ I was thinking about Grantai-- ”

“You just turned down toward the art school, instead of the way we usually go home.”

Enjolras pauses and lets himself look around. “I took a left instead of a right,” he dismisses, though it unsettles him a little bit. “Anyway, if I was thinking about Grantaire it would be about how he’s probably slacking off right now.”

“Undoubtedly. Want to go check?”

The hell of it all is, he does. He really wants to see what Grantaire’s promised trek from 1st to 60th consists of. He’s not even sure _why_. He doesn’t know what he expects - if he’ll be happier if Grantaire is earnestly handing out fliers, or if he’s right and he’s going to be drinking with some inane fashion student or something. He’s not sure what he wants to expect.

He wants Grantaire’s promises to be genuine, of course. That’s what it makes sense to want. To not be disappointed.  

Maybe.

Maybe he just doesn’t want Grantaire to be complicated.

Grantaire isn’t complicated. He’s just a boy like so many Enjolras knows: average looking with above average intelligence and under-average self esteem, and he loves to be surrounded by people but he doubts himself too much to become close to any of them. He drinks to make himself brave enough to speak, and if he drank a little less maybe more people would listen to what he had to say.

Which is usually said _well_ , though it’s frankly sickening how much of it feels like apologism for not trying, dressed up as comment on human nature. The reason they’re called the Abased and not ABC now is actually stolen from one of Grantaire’s rants -- and Enjolras counts himself blessed that Grantaire probably doesn’t remember that -- at some point he had said “it’s a good thing you’re used to playing in _a basement_ ; it’s not as though you’ll ever be allowed higher”, Courfeyrac had leapt on the pun, and they’d all had to admit it sounded better.

His willingness to be contrary would be nice if it were passionate, but it seems more like devil’s advocacy than anything else. Enjolras doesn’t _get_ arguing to no purpose and hypothetical dilemmas; the only person he can put up doing that with is Combeferre, who enjoys theory. He can tell Grantaire is smart and sharp-witted and he’s got potential. He’s easily a match for any other mind they hang out with, and he wouldn’t have made such fast friends with a few of them if he weren’t. But he’s not interested. Enjolras knows that acting on beliefs can be alienating and aggressive, that most people back down when it comes to it, because they’d rather have the friends than make people uncomfortable. It’s not hard to see why Grantaire questions what they do, just disappointing.

If Grantaire says he cares, if he says he would do anything, it’s just to keep himself ingratiated. Nothing about his nature says otherwise.

Now he _is_ thinking about Grantaire, and he hasn’t answered Combeferre, but they haven’t changed course either, so he simply says, “Well, let’s see, I guess.”

They don’t say anything else, the houses giving way to green space as they near the campus. It’s nearly dark, and he’s beginning to think the boy has left, or never showed up to begin with, and he definitely is starting to feel pretty stupid trying to scan the students dotting the lawn and buildings for dark curls; what is he even looking for?

“We should probably --” he starts, and freezes, throwing a hand in front of Combeferre to still his step as if any movement might give them away, shooing him out of the main road. Not more than three yards to their left, Grantaire, all six feet of messy hair and hooded sweatshirt. Enjolras stares at him, not sure what to do or even what he’s even doing himself.

He’s under a big cherry tree, talking to a slight boy clutching a portfolio.The boy is talking with his hands, and he takes a swig from a flask before passing it to Grantaire; Grantaire takes a drink and shakes his head. The boy shrugs and stands there for a minute before gesturing away. He leans to kiss Grantaire a little theatrically before he leaves, lower cheek like they’re some kind of classy Europeans. Grantaire is fumbly at this gesture, but he clutches at the boy’s shirt as he comes close, anyway. Then he just stands there watching him leave, taking another swig of his drink and leaning on the tree.

Enjolras can feel his nails embedding themselves into his palm. He wants to scream at him. He wants to throw his fucking flask in the river. He wants to do something.

What he does is stay still and say “that’s about what I expected,”

and Combeferre says quietly, “I know. Come on, let's go practice.”

 


	3. Wash Your Hands of This

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _R watches the streetlights diffuse into watercolor on Enjolras’ skin and hates the allegiance his heart has sworn without his permission._
> 
> In which there is a concert, a confrontation and a catastrophe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentioned drug use in a rather unhealthy manner.
> 
> Also mentioned AIDS. Which will continue to be a thing, just for reference.

They park in a tiny alley behind the Hotel, all three of them and half their friends shoved into a van Combeferre pragmatically bought for them last summer, and explode out like some sort of clown car. They’re used to moving in fast and having to get out just as fast in places they’re not entirely wanted. The Hotel is surrounded by two other for-lease locations and a liquor store -- the corner that hasn’t cleaned up yet -- so it’s not likely that they’re going to be bothering any neighbors, but there’s no telling how intensely the new owners are watching the place.

“Marius says you want to go straight down the basement stairs and to the right,” Courfeyrac says, shoving Enjolras and Combeferre in the right direction, and the two set on scoping the place out. Feuilly has already hauled their pathetic excuse for an amp out of the back and is heading in after them. Bossuet drags drums down stalwartly, with Joly grabbing at the other side and urging him anxiously to _be careful!_ and _use your knees!;_  the roommate and sometime girlfriend of both, Musichetta, handwaving both of them with a laugh and shouldering Courfeyrac’s guitar without being asked.

Courfeyrac strolls up the side of the building to look for the rest of his friends. Bahorel isn’t there yet; he’s got acquaintances in different area codes to gather together. Jehan, though, is; he’s talking quietly and excitedly to someone toward the front of the building and his hands are full of zines. He hands one to the girl he’s chatting with, flipping through it and tapping something. “...this one, for instance, the juxtaposition is so powerful.” She grins and thanks him before heading in.

Courf leans on one hand behind him and says close to his ear, “Prouvaire, I don’t think I’ve ever told you how talented I think you are.”

Jehan pivots in surprise, ears pink, and laughs a little bemusedly. “Uh...probably not.”

“How talented, and well-spoken and...mm, what’s the word I’m looking for...helpful...” Courfeyrac hasn’t moved, so he’s about an inch from Jehan’s face. Their resident dreamer doesn’t flinch, just smiles patiently.

“What do you need me to do?”

Courfeyrac beams and dumps a bunch of cables into his arms. “Thank you!”

“Courf, I’m trying to get people to read,” he complains but it’s affectionate, and he ducks his head under the coils to stack like a giant accessory.

 

Courfeyrac locks up the van, grabbing the last remaining things - a stray drumstick, some picks, a pedal - out of the back and heading downstairs. Inside it’s dark and damp and smells like garbage. It’s several feet before he reaches the place where a naked bulb lights the hallway. Glass crunches under his feet.

He can hear noise down the hall and reaches a fire door where the hall opens up into a wide space. Hot water heaters and a furnace cluster in the corner kept company with a few boxes of assorted things and abandoned pieces of furniture, the storage of long-gone residents. The light filtering in from the ground-level window is dying; the couple of caged bulbs they’ve set up their stuff under are the only light sources in the room.

He lets himself absorb the space. The people who have come in and out of here, the paved over emptiness, the new friends who are already coming in chattering and letting themselves fill up those spaces, his friends’ familiar energy. The part of his brain that’s been taking music lessons since he was 6 is already analyzing acoustics even though they’ve never really cared about _sound_. He’d played guitar for fun before the time they started as a band, but ‘Ferre had never played drums before that moment in junior year.

At the time it had been something to do. It had almost been something they _had_ to do. Enjolras back then had been frightening in a way, a bottle bomb waiting to explode in your hand. Maybe in some ways he still is, but he has people to listen to him now, a way to let off the buildup of all of his disgust at society’s stagnance, to feel useful. To _be_ useful; Courfeyrac sometimes sees his lead singer -- the attention he commands -- and is filled with such utter love and pride -- but he isn’t exactly sure what happened to the lonely boy he’s known for years. Back then he’d had no outlet but talking to them, and any number of diversions for the rich and bored. Being straight-edge serves a handful of purposes for Enjolras; recreating his own image is the one only he and ‘Ferre know about.

So one day when he’d asked “why doesn’t anyone say anything?” they’d said, “well we could” and that was that.

But they’d never expected to do it seriously.

Now, witnessing people collect to watch them play he’s still a little bemused at what exactly has happened here. But the familiar excitement and nervousness is buzzing through his veins, and listening to Combeferre warm up his drums, watching as more kids fill the space -- to see them, to listen to _them! --_ he wants to get going.

“I’m going to throw up,” Enjolras tells him from behind and fists a hand in his shirt to drag him out into the hall.

Courfeyrac laughs, tucking a hand around his guitar to minimally protect it. “You are not. You fucking love this.”

“I think my chest is going to explode. Chests can’t explode. Right?” Enjolras is pacing. “We can’t fucking do this. What assholes are we to try and say anything about this place? The songs are shit anyway.”

“No one else is saying anything, and the songs aren’t shit.” Courf is used to this, and he leans against the door, hammering arpeggios over the strings of his guitar without strumming. “They’re good. Ras.” He grabs at Enjolras abruptly and holds him in place, gesturing with his head through the wired window. “Look at all those people. They’re here to see _us._ You know what that means? They’re here because of _you.”_

“Right,” Enjolras says. His eyes are fixed beyond Courf, over his shoulder on the crowd in the basement and he’s gone still. “Right.”

“And you won’t disappoint them.”

“They’re not here because of me, Courf,” he says suddenly, meeting his gaze, his eyes alight. “They’re here because they know in their hearts that certain truths are self-evident and they must return to the places where that’s not a lie.”

He is so utterly passionate and sincere, so _ridiculous_ and so himself again; Courfeyrac grabs his face in both hands and kisses him on the mouth in excitement and Enjolras laughs against his mouth and grips his shoulders. “Come on.”

Courfeyrac ducks back around the door and catches Ferre’s eye from where he’s gotten up to stretch. Ferre grins and starts to roll out a marching beat, and Courf watches the kids press closer and circle around, strides forward and plugs in his guitar, shaking his hair out of his face and opening a relentless progression. This is where he is most home.

At some point Enjolras must have slipped in because there’s no click of a door when he comes in; their taped up mic screeches with feedback as he grabs it but he’s already screaming into it, hurricane force diving forward toward the crowd.

They are already shoving and seething, screaming back at him the lines they know, just screaming in general. This is what Courfeyrac loves, seeing the reaction; seeing their effect. Knowing that what he does can make people happy or angry or exhilarated.

They start into something new almost immediately after. A huge percentage of their songs never get turned into recordings, just because they write nearly constantly. Enjolras is a machine, and he’s constantly getting ideas -- from their friends, who are all great thinkers; from the news, from graffiti. If he hasn’t got something new he wants to try, Combeferre wants to work in a beat or Courfeyrac himself has a riff he wants to incorporate somewhere. Every song is about a minute long rant so it takes nothing to put together, a couple run throughs; it doesn’t matter if it’s rough. The best and favorite of them -- the best lines, the most interesting, or just the ones everyone loves to sing -- are repeated at other shows, or recorded and turned into a mixtape and eventually an EP to be sold for 5, 10 bucks at another show and pay for gas once in a while. But there are a lot that only get sung once or twice.

Yesterday, at practice, they had a lot to say about the idiocy of emptying this place out, so a few songs got written. Enjolras launches into it and the crowd only takes a few seconds to catch the beat.

... _improvements will be made/ got some work to be done/listen to the lies you say/when you want somebody gone/so go on/ go on and rent your realty/we are your reality/_

 _“We are your reality”_ , Courfeyrac screams along, finding people in the front row to play in the face of; feeling gratified when he sees Marius throwing himself into the crowd a little ways over with Eponine a terror beside him.

He spots Gav screaming back from the mosh pit, all flail. Gavroche is this kid who used to live here; Eponine’s younger brother, or half brother, or something. He’s always downtown and so they all tend to run into him; his weird insistence on befriending them has made Courfeyrac fond of him in a sort of fraternal way, but he feels like he’s too young to be here. Maybe that’s just Courf being unfair -- he was definitely getting into trouble when he was a preteen -- but this place, with everyone screaming and shoving and ready for a fight, seems unkind to a ten year old.

Then again life is pretty unkind to Gav. If he’s having fun what the fuck. He catches the kid’s eye with a short salute between chords and Gav grins wide in a rickety-fence of teeth.

 

The show is a blur of sweat and screaming. He loses track of time, throwing himself into the crowd and letting them shove him back to his feet, running and sliding on the concrete slick with sweat and blood and beer, soaked in sweat and fingers aching. He hops up on Combeferre’s kick drum with a grin; the drummer beams at him and keeps the time as Courf finishes the riff and jumps down, letting himself fall backwards onto hard concrete and feeling it bruise his shoulderblades as he tenses to keep himself playing.

 _Wash your hands of this, wash your hands of this_ Enjolras is screaming on his knees, and he knows he could do this forever.

As the last chords die Enjolras comes over to triumphantly haul him to his feet. Courf laughs totally out of breath and Enjolras says “don’t die on me yet, I still need you” in his ear before letting him go.

Then he hears Grantaire laugh above the crowd, too-loud, and presses his lips together as the smile fades from Enjolras’ face a little.

 

\---

 

R is just a little bit high. If you asked, beforehand, why he thought tonight was a good night for that he would have said _man I don’t fucking know_ and also _fuck Enjolras’ regime of Sharpie Xs_ but the truth is, he just doesn’t want to think tonight.

He doesn’t want to think about how he failed Enjolras. He doesn’t want to think about why he failed.

R hadn’t gotten halfway across the quad with his fliers before running into Tomas, a friend from freshman year. A classmate of theirs from life drawing was in the hospital with an infection -- the nurses too afraid to even serve him food -- Grantaire had seen the look in Tomas’ eyes and all he’d wanted to do was drink himself into a stupor for the rest of the day.

So he had, and then today he’d done nothing useful at all, just sat and chainsmoked and thought about how even the most passionate person he knew didn’t have time to talk about his friends dying, and hated himself for it and for making promises he couldn’t keep. He’d found someone to buy amphetamines off of about an hour before the show so he wouldn’t think, so he could just let himself break apart at the hands of the crowd.

And now he’s hearing about it.

 

“I should have known you’d be fucked up,” Enjolras spits at R, and breaks past Courfeyrac’s restraining hand. “You don’t have a single bit of respect for me, do you? For anything I say? You pretend you’d do anything, but you can’t even take yourself seriously, much less anything else.”

R laughs. Laughs, because Enjolras is as beautiful when he’s angry at Grantaire as when he’s angry at society, and it’s infuriating; laughs because _why does he even care_ ; laughs because that’s all there is left to do. “You have no idea what I’m serious about.” He shakes his head and starts walking.

“We have battles to fight,” Enjolras insists, striding along after him. “we’re trying to make a point here and you’re just concerned about how you feel right now, what’s going on in your head --”

“Do you think it really matters to anyone if I’m fucked up or not? Do you think if I look respectable, let the world hurt me like you do, my voice will mean more?”

“Look, if you need someone to tell you you’re worth listening to you’re in the wrong place, I’m not here to make you feel good --”

“No, that privilege is reserved for demigods such as yourself,” he snaps back, turning, and immediately hates himself for the look it surprises to Enjolras’ face; but he can’t stop now. He can feel the blood in his face. The air smells like ozone, like a storm coming in and he can feel it pounding in his head. “Do you think I don’t know about you? Do you think I can’t tell what everyone else can’t?”

“Enlighten me,” Enjolras says quietly.

“You have such conviction. You’re so stoic and focused, some fucking general with his troops, fucking abstaining from anything but overthrowing the government. Can’t get high, can’t have sex, because that shit’s distracting. Too many causes. Too many lyrics to write. Fuck you -- you’re just afraid. Afraid of disease. Afraid of what people would say or that they wouldn’t listen. You’re a fucking terrified queer-ass kid like half of us. At least I have the decency to admit what I am.” He feels as if he’s outside himself, watching another Grantaire have the brazenness to say any of this out loud.

“I might be afraid,” Enjolras says in a tone that could burn stone, “But I’m not going to do all the work for the people who want to see me destroyed.”

R drags his knuckles across the concrete next to him and thrusts his hand out at it. It’s a wall painted with a series of white tally marks that cover the whole thing -- and in red, _HOW MANY?_ “Do you think anyone cares if you’re a saint or a slut? No one cares about martyrs. Racism didn’t die with Martin Luther King, we just got a fucking bank holiday and barely that. So be a statue, it doesn’t matter. If we all died right now it wouldn’t make the fucking papers.”

He slams his fist against the wall, barely feeling the impact.  “ _We are nothing_. Get it through your head. We aren’t even worth a press conference. I’m sorry if every second of my meaningless existence isn’t dedicated to improving the world, but sometimes I just want to forget about it.”

Enjolras has stopped. He’s looking at the wall as if he’s never seen it before, which can’t possibly be true; it’s a staple of the neighborhood. Rain’s coming down now and the air is cooling the sweat from their skin. “You’re right,” he says slowly, and puts his hand over Grantaire’s, a little tentatively like calming an crazed animal.  Maybe he’s right to, because R startles at the touch and stares at him. “Maybe you’re right that our deaths mean nothing to them. But our _lives can_ , if we want them to. If we choose to make them.” He chews on his lower lip and shakes his head.

“I know you won’t believe me. I know you don’t believe in any of this. And you can walk away. But I think you know that we _can_ make ourselves count -- we _have_ to, have to be a force, have to claw out something to be remembered for, because fuck it, what is it for then?” His eyes are bright and desperate and he’s gripping Grantaire’s hand. “What else is it all for?”

“Enjolras,” R says, his stomach turning over, “you--”

“I think you know that,” he repeats. “Or you wouldn’t be here.” He pulls his hand away and pushes his hair back wetly from his face, takes a long breath.

R watches the streetlights diffuse into watercolor on Enjolras’ skin and hates the allegiance his heart has sworn without his permission. “I _don’t_ know that,” he says when he can find the words. “But you do, and I believe in you.”

Enjolras opens his mouth, and it’s then when Courfeyrac comes sprinting down the sidewalk, saying, “I don’t care what you’re fighting about, I don’t care, just _shut up for a minute_ \-- LaMarque is dying,” and the world just spins.

 


	4. It'll Be Tomorrow Soon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Eponine is a collection of pieces, spit and spite and stories, a magpie with all the tidbits she latches onto._  
>  In which Courfeyrac doesn't know what he's doing, Marius doesn't know what to say and Eponine doesn't know why she does these things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for mention of child abuse.

They find out the way everyone finds out, by word of mouth. It seems like half the ward knows within the hour. It’s not as if they really know anything at all; Alderman Lamarque has been disappearing to doctors for a year now, people say _liver problems_ ; they say _cancer_ , behind closed doors they worry _AIDS_ ;  what he says publicly is “I’m fine and I’ll be back to work soon”. The defender of their ward, he’s one of the few people who’s willing to say something against the constant encroach of development and leeching of funds from public services, and while it’s rarely enough to change a majority opinion, it’s earned him respect by his people.

But this isn’t a doctor’s visit. From all accounts, it’s ambulances, it’s hushed voices and ICU admission: it’s unexpected.

“I’m going out,” Courfeyrac says abruptly from where he’s sitting on the couch. Marius watches him for a minute as he shoves the window open and ducks out to the fire escape. He can’t think of anything to say. He’s not as politically active as the rest of them; he’s not as familiar with their alderman’s votes, but he’s always been happy to claim Lamarque as his ward’s, and glad for someone unashamed to acknowledge him and his friends. He’s always been especially fond since Lamarque is, like his father was, a veteran and a liberal. Somehow knowing he’s dying and Marius can’t do anything hits a little close to home.

“Are you coming?” his roommate says a little impatiently, half in and half out of the window, and Marius runs a hand through his hair.

“Yes, yeah, of course.” He gets up and follows him out onto the rickety set of stairs that are their escape. They’re rusted, swaying, creaking with the weight of their two bodies, barely wide enough to accommodate them both on the same stair if they press their ribs into the railings.

“I should have gone after Enjolras,” Courf says, shaking a cigarette out. He offers the pack to Marius. Marius pauses over it before accepting. He doesn’t have enough money to really make a habit of smoking but when he lived here his first year in the city, he and Courf did this a lot and right now the familiarity as much as the nicotine seems like a balm on anxious nerves.

“He’s the one who took off,” Marius points out. “He can hardly blame you.”

Courf is bouncing his knee irritably and he takes a long drag on his cigarette. “I just don’t trust him. The way he looked after we talked...I don’t know, Ferre’ll find him, I guess. I still don’t know where R went, either. Someone should --”

“Jehan was going after him. You know, you look fucking exhausted, too.”

“I just want everyone to be okay,” Courf says, almost angrily, and Marius knows he’s not just talking about Enjolras, or R.

“Me too.”

“Do you ever -- never mind.” Courf sighs and Marius raises an eyebrow at him. “Like, do you ever feel like you’ve got everything under control -- you know how everything is supposed to work, you’ve got a plan -- and then it just all comes crashing fucking down around you?”

“Yeah,” he says back, slowly and ignoring the tightness in his chest. “Yeah, I do.”

“Are you ever scared?” His friend looks at him and his eyes are suddenly young and alone and very tired.

He chews on his lip and shoves Courf a little with his shoulder, trying not to show the alarm in his eyes. “It’ll be okay. You’re okay. It’s just tonight, things are just crazy right now, Courf...We’ll deal with all this shit together.”

“Yeah.” Courf laughs and runs a hand through his hair. “You’re right, I’m just tired.”

Marius sits for a long time thinking about how ridiculous this night has actually been. It had started out so well. Eponine all smiles as they met so incongruously at the empty, sad building that used to be their home and was now a venue -- the incredible exhilaration of the concert and the feeling of being completely overtaken by the music and voices of his friends, screaming side by side with a couple dozen other kids -- and then suddenly everything going straight to hell.

He can tell Eponine’s a little pissed off at him, but he doesn’t know what it is that he said. Marius isn’t exactly a master of social niceties; he never says something when he should and he says too much when he should just shut his mouth. He’s not sure if he was born this blunderingly or just grew up into a family where every word was treated like a gem dropping from his mouth instead of the asinine shit about a third of it was.

His bluntness suits him well in his mostly imaginary law career, and he’s even a little fond of this particular aspect of his character. But he’s also fond of his ex-upstairs-neighbor, and he’s familiar with her facial expressions, and “resigned” isn’t exactly one he had hoped to elicit from her after such a good night.

Whatever it is, she isn’t telling him and that annoys him even more. His interest is in exposing the truth at the bottom of things for better or worse; humanity at large seems to be occupied with whatever pleases people.

“Talk to me,” Courf says, leaning his head on Marius’ shoulder to look at him upside down.

“I’m just done with tonight,” Marius says, and tosses his cigarette over the rail, watching sparks fly.

“Well. It’ll be tomorrow soon.”

\----

Eponine’s idea of what might happen in the pre-dawn hours following the concert had been vague at best, and granted most of them had involved Marius Pontmercy in one way or another, but none of the possibilities she’d considered had included finding some fucking girl for him.

She isn’t sure who she’s more pissed off at: him, for being so completely obtuse and infatuated with someone who doesn’t even know him, or herself for humoring him.

He’d just seemed so enthralled at the idea that she knew the man they’d seen tonight, the one who’s always giving out change -- so curious about what she had to say about him, so trusting that she could find out whatever it was he needed -- and fuck if that wasn’t a little bit its own reward. Eponine is a collection of pieces, spit and spite and stories, a magpie with all the tidbits she latches onto, but for the most part they’re just for her. Or she’d told herself so, but the way Marius broke into a smile at the thought that she might _know_ something about some old guy, or more accurately, his daughter...thinking that she could be the one to put that smile on his face...

 _Stupid,_ she thinks. _Stupid girl, letting stupid boys get in your head._

It isn’t like she can be angry at Marius for thinking her ability to find things out could be useful. He isn’t the first, he certainly won’t be the last: she’s the idiot who keeps letting people use her for it like it means she’s special or something.

She isn’t special. She’s a fucking key to someone else’s door.

Well, she chose this. If that’s the way it’s going to be, she might as well be a good key.

Eponine has been watching the man’s progress from on top of one of the ubiquitous walls in the neighborhood; lying on her stomach she can’t be seen easily, but as he’s walking downhill, she can see him for a few streets off under the streetlights.

Now she hops down and follows. He’s too far ahead of her to see exactly which house he stops at, but a moment’s investigation of where the coating of rain and oil and dirt has been disturbed on the street leads to one: a large house at the corner, as the hill crests before the road cuts through it. A short brick wall topped with an ironwork fence sets it apart from its neighbors except where the fence is interrupted by a large oak.

So this is where they live. Several metro stops and a long walk from the places she had meant to be. And she still can’t tell if this is the right place; after all, she knows this man only as someone who occasionally is on her side of town and gives out too much spare change. What if Marius is wrong? What if it’s the wrong old man? What if the girl he’s looking for doesn’t even live here? She doesn’t know this area, doesn’t feel safe here on these empty pretty streets, and she has no way of figuring out if this is the girl’s house.

Swearing under her breath, she hauls herself up the fence and into the arms of the oak and settles down to watch.

 

It’s just about dawn when she wakes to the slow creak of a door. Eponine never sleeps soundly - she likes to say “sleep is for the weak” overloudly at very little prompting as if it makes her stronger for always being on her feet. In the juncture of two tree limbs, however, while a little safer than some places she’s shut her eyes before, is not the most comfortable place she’s ever settled and she is on a mission, so she’s only let herself nod off a few times.

She scrambles to a crouch to peer. That kind of slow door-shut sound can only be someone creeping out, and sure enough, a slim figure appears on the other side and shuts the door carefully.

It’s a girl. _The_ girl, Eponine guesses. She’s wearing a black vest over an oversized shirt and jean shorts, and is wandering into the yard braiding her hair unthinkingly, barefoot and aimless.

Eponine cranes her neck to see. She can’t imagine what would summon someone out of such a grand house at 5 in the morning if they had somewhere safe and comfortable to sleep and clearly weren’t going anywhere. The girl is wandering through the garden around the outside of the house, bending to inspect the flowers and herbs growing, murmuring softly to them like they’re close friends.

Eponine can see why Marius is so entranced by her; she’s beautiful. Gentle and stalky and graceful.

And lonely. She’s lonely. It echoes out of every step the girl takes, the way she cranes her neck to watch a bird flutter out of her path and over the fence.

Something clenches in Eponine’s stomach as the girl turns to follow the flight of the bird, the sudden twist of deja vu in the way the sun reflects off pale skin

\-- and suddenly she’s five years old, watching some ghost of a girl pull herself up with all her strength to look out their window wide-eyed

watching as her mother smacks the girl away from the sun and shouts at her

watching and saying nothing because they’re not friends, they can never be friends --

_No. It can’t be._

_Fucking Cosette?_

That’s crazy. There’s no way her ex-foster-sister is living here, in this kind of house, much less is the object of Marius Pontmercy’s stalkery affection. That tiny dirty orphan girl bearing the brunt of her mother’s anger and her father’s manipulation for most of the early years of her life?

Her parents hadn’t been kind to the child they’d taken in in a bid for a monthly check; they’d squeezed as many extra allowances out as possible and she’d been basically a servant. She was dressed in hand me downs, worn out rags stolen from Salvation Army boxes and dumpsters; any infraction earned a beating. Meanwhile Eponine and her sister -- this was before the boys, before DCFS -- had been showered with gifts beyond her parents’ means. Pretty dresses on every occasion, toys, treats.

Maybe it was the only way they knew to be affectionate. Or maybe it was just a way to tell them their lives could be worse, that any complaint or fear was laughable. Maybe Cosette was even a way to do that.

Looking back, Eponine can’t find the real from the pretend in her childhood.

Eponine’s heart is hammering in her chest; she can’t take her eyes from the girl. It can’t be. She’s imagining it, some trick of the light. Some betrayal of her mind, to take her back to that place.

She wants to run, but she can’t drag herself away.

She closes her eyes against it, but instead she’s five again listening to the floor creak; the far away drunk laughter of her father and some lodger; the soft whimper of Cosette crying in the room next to hers: hating that this girl is so stupid that she thinks someone cares if she cries, and that she’s so stupid that she wishes she could.

It’s Christmas, she’s almost six, her father is making her say hello and show off the new dress he’s bought her to all his friends, and they all ask her questions and just laugh at her answers as if she’s a wind up doll, “real precious”, but he’s behind her and she can’t run off. Across the room her mother is gripping Cosette by the elbow to keep her out of sight and they glance at each other sidelong: two trapped animals.

Now as she forces her eyes back open she can’t unsee it. Cosette, now grown, clean and rich and beautiful, but her eyes still hopeful and searching and too old in a baby face. And she, just some discarded trash no one wants, hiding her bruises and sitting in a tree to give her up to some boy. _What would you think of me now?_

She feels suddenly sick and she can’t do this: she shoves off from the tree and takes off running.

“Hello?” the girl behind her calls at the sudden noise, and runs a few steps toward the fence. “Hello? Is someone there?”

Part of her wants to turn around. But she’s not there, she’s no one, no one was ever there at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Work has been so crazy, I'm sorry this is so late -- and so internal! Hopefully the next one will be sooner. Bonus feature for next time: Jehan and Grantaire together and an excess of literary reference.


	5. Darkness Passes, Light Remains

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I love him, and I want him to tear me to pieces.”_
> 
>  
> 
> In which friends are found, declarations are made, and a new fight is at hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for: Alcoholism, discussion of suicide and AIDS. 
> 
> Also, hopefully not too much totally-wrong history. This is meant to be set 83-85 ish. If you notice my AIDS history is completely incorrect, let me know.

Jehan is tired. He hasn’t slept in over 24 hours: last night had been spent cajoling the last few submissions of writing and art into Flowers for Guns, the zine he edits; sneaking in with Feuilly to his work to cut up paper, copy work, cut it up, paste it back together, print it into something worth looking at at the show, along with a handful of fliers poster-size to tack up. Then at the show, as usual he’d thrown himself in headlong to the crowd, ending up bruised and battered and happy, and then from there hearing about Lamarque, it had been a freefall, a crash down to sitting shell shocked and stunned on the pavement. 

Now he’s looking for R, not sure where he even is, if he’s gotten himself killed somewhere wandering through every side alley and gutter within walking distance of the Hotel. Breathing feels like an effort with the weight of knowing too much and not knowing anything at all. A distinct night breeze is drying his rain-and-sweat-soaked clothes to his skin and he can feel goosebumps rising. Every muscle aches.

There’s a moment during every concert that approaches the sublime. Just at the moment that everything feels too bruised, too screamed hoarse and impatient with other people to continue, something breaks through, some revelation that this is what it feels like to care, that each feeling is tolerable and human and essential to the larger experience. The fragile writer boy becomes the fanatic. Jehan has never, once, kept himself from giving everything he had.

This is the same. This is what it feels like to care. Even the irritation, the exhaustion, the anger at Grantaire for being irresponsible, at all of society for shunning Lamarque in his need. It’s not too much: it’s normal. 

He takes a breath.

The sun is creeping up over the buildings, silver and white blushed by pinky-orange. It reminds Jehan why he loves living here, even in a side street en route to the Musain with trash shoved into the gutter, or maybe moreso for the juxtaposition. He rounds the corner, tilting his head up to watch for a minute. He’s tired, and Lamarque is dying, but he's also on a mission to find a friend who needs him and he won’t give up -- and nevertheless the world keeps turning toward the sun, and beautifully so.

“Rosy-fingered dawn,” someone says in a familiarly slurred voice ahead of him. He strains to see and then nearly exclaims in relief as a movement in the shadows unmasks R -- with his dark curls and clothes nearly a shade himself -- watching him from the shade between two buildings a few yards ahead. He’s just sitting, as if he got this far and gave up. 

“R, you fucking ass,” he says, running a few paces to him. “You could have been dead and you’re quoting Homer at me.” Jehan’s stomach twists a little at how perfect that is. Grantaire is an idiot sometimes, and certainly a pessimist, but he knows all of them and their quirks, he loves them; and Jehan hasn’t been admitting to himself exactly how worried he was. He’s been worried about Enjolras, too, but Enjolras will be fine, he thinks: he’s got a purpose, and he has Combeferre, who knows him better than his own family, to find him. Grantaire isn’t like that - he doesn’t have a point to prove, and he maintains something of a distance from everyone he loves with what has to be practiced skill. 

R scoffs, “Dead. You sound like Joly. M’ not dead, I’m drunk.” 

“So you are,” Jehan agrees without judgment and plops down next to him stretching his legs. 

“What are you doing?” 

“I’m sitting next to you. What are you doing?”

“S’not obvious?” Grantaire raises his bottle and laughs humourlessly. “I’m destroying myself.”

“Is that what Enjolras said?”

“Doing the work for them. And why shouldn’t I? Clean up the waste. Waste of time, waste of space...”

Privately Jehan thinks that this self-destructive spiral is the real waste, but try arguing that with a self loathing drunkard. “You hurt your hand,” he says instead. “What happened?”

R looks down at the bruise flowering over his knuckles as if he’s just seen it. “I hit something,” he says, and stretches his hand, then winces, pulling his head away as if the memory itself is going to strike him. He takes a deep breath and stares emptily at the street. “Jehan, I said terrible things...”

“I’m sure both of you said terrible things,” Jehan says. “You two don’t exactly...hold back when it comes to arguing. None of us are gentle with people’s feelings. But isn’t that sort of -- per usual?”

“Usually he doesn’t look at me like that,” R says, and stares across the street. “Like I might be right. I called him a coward, a liar, useless -- and he looked at me like I might be right. I didn’t have the right...fuck!” He throws the bottle to the ground ahead of them and Jehan tenses a little as it shatters into sparkling shards. 

“R --”

“Look,” he says, furrowing his brow to speak with forceful precision. “This is me, this is who I am. Just some nothing hiding in the shadows, doesn’t do anything, can’t trust anyone, won’t fix himself. I’m tired, Jehan. I can’t fight fucking walls with my fists anymore. We’re fucking dying here, and no one will say anything and you know, maybe I’m more concerned that no matter how many times Joly washes his hands and how many boys Enjolras doesn’t fuck that there’s nothing I can do about it and it’ll just keep happening. I don’t want to show up to the funerals of all my friends but I don’t think I get a choice and I don’t think anyone cares. You know?”

Jehan presses his lips together. He hasn’t ever thought of their friends as a “we” in that regard. He was initially drawn in by the music, and for the group-as-a-whole’s passion against the system. He himself has been dealing with a low-level simmering panic that he’s been trying to ignore as the friends on the outskirts of his circles get sick, die even, or know people who do. It occurs to him that Grantaire, at the Art Institute, probably has seen even more casualities amongst his acquaintances. But the Abased and their friends particularly? 

As he thinks through his friends, though, he starts to feel the panic set in a little deeper in his bones, stretching in his chest. Thinks about how if they started actually talking about AIDS, how they’d have even less credence than they have now, and how fucked that is. And he can feel his hands itching to write, then, because he does try to knock walls down with his fists, claw at them with the mortar under his nails, graffiti them until they’re invisible: that’s what he does. 

“Yeah,” he says slowly against the bile in his throat. “I do know.. Is this what you said to him last night?”

“I said a lot of things last night.” He sighs. “That was just some of it.” He leans a little toward Jehan and Jehan sits up to take his weight..

“You have every right to be angry and scared,” Jehan says quietly. “To want someone to say something.” He looks at him. “I do.”

“He’s the only one people would listen to, but they wouldn’t even listen to him,” he says despondently, half ignoring Jehan. “Fuck, what am I doing? Telling someone what to fight for, when to stop. It’s fucking bullshit, it’s terrible. I do it every day, and you know, I can stand it when he tells me it is...but like this...”

“You want him to hate you, not to believe you,” Jehan realizes. “You know, that’s not fair, R.” He hauls him to his feet. “Come on, we gotta go home.”

“You didn’t see him, when we were talking,” R insists, though he gets up, leaning heavily on Jehan. “-- he looked so fucking -- unsure. Unsure, him. Fucking Apollo. I just -- I don’t get to do that.” He stops in the middle of the street and shoves his hands against his eyes. “I just hate this, I just want to stop -- being --” His voice cracks on the word and he doesn’t finish; maybe it was the end of the sentence. Jehan’s ribs hurt with it; he feels suddenly like maybe he could siphon off R’s pain, just a little, and that would be better: I could bear it, he thinks.

“You really love him, don’t you?” he asks quietly.

Grantaire turns to look him in the eyes. “I love him, and I want him to tear me to pieces.” 

Jehan feels like he should be taken aback by that but he’s not; profound, overwrought declarations are just his style and insisting on restrained emotion never has been. So instead he just lets it hit him, takes it at face value. Finally he says, “If you love him, let him make up his own mind. He’s human, like you. He’s scared, like you say. He’s strong, too, and you know that. If Enjolras cares what you say, he has the right, and if you love him, you won’t run from that.” 

R shakes his head. “Part of me -- is afraid he’ll never want me around again after last night. But I don’t know what I’d do if he did care...what I think. He’s not supposed to give a shit about me, he can’t, Jehan.” He’s almost pleading. Desperate.

Jehan starts them walking again. “Il y a deux manières d'être malheureux: ou désirer ce que l'on n'a pas, ou posséder ce que l'on désirait.*,” It elicits a sad smile from R; it’s true, for one thing, but quotes are also their game, something no one else does. 

“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know,*” he parries, and Jehan takes a minute finding a match for it. 

“An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.”. 

“Still doesn’t explain me,” Grantaire says wryly. “You got me with Hemingway?”

“I did. Your turn.” 

He shakes his head. “Don’t wanna play, ‘m tired.”

“I don’t care, come on.” R’s done a job on himself and between the selfloathing and the intoxication he’s dragging, becoming more of a dead weight on Jehan’s shoulder. Keeping him thinking of quotes seems like a good distraction for his brain, and it at least reassures Jehan. “You’re a repository of quotes about alcohol, stay with me.”

R shrugs and mutters, “I went to the worst of bars hoping to get killed but all I could do was to get drunk again,*” and Jehan frowns. 

“Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it,*” he tells him, seriously, and not at all referring to his own. R gives him a slow smile, 

“Well, I would hate to have to fight you over that,” he allows.

Jehan arches an eyebrow. “Fuck, you’ve never even seen me angry.” Few people know how scary Jehan can get when he really lets himself lose control. He doesn’t do it very often. His sense of self-preservation is practically speaking just as fucked as Grantaire’s. Probably all of theirs are in one way or another. It’s just that for him, it has no direct correlation with pain, or the grip of failure. Those are normal, important feelings not worth ending. Unwarranted cruelty though -- undeserved suffering -- that he would take a bullet for if it meant an end to it. “It’s your turn again.”

“Unbeing dead isn't being alive.*” Grantaire says after a minute.

Jehan is starting to regret this game that has turned into an argument. “You say you can’t breathe, the world takes so fucking much, and I wish I could turn what you’ve given into air.”

R stares for a minute, disconcerted. “I... Who is that?”

“Me,” he says quietly. “You should know, your sketch was on the opposite page.”

R is silent. “I kinda love you, you know?” he says to his shoes after a while of walking in silence and looks up at Jehan sidelong,

and Jehan says “I love you back.” 

 

They’re nearly to Jehan’s apartment and that’s about as good as it’s going to get with R in this shape. Besides, he needs to call someone; at least half his friends are either looking for someone else or have expressed concern, a thought R probably has never even entertained.

“Up the stairs,” he instructs, and Grantaire frowns at a walkup that isn’t instinctual to him.

“Taking me home, Prouvaire?” he asks sardonically as Jehan nudges him up a couple flights. 

“You know it,” Jehan says from behind him, “I definitely find you most attractive when you’ve just drunk a handle of whiskey and you’re telling me how everyone should hate you.” 

“Wow, how do you manage to control yourself?” Grantaire laughs, and then coughs, and stops laughing and turns, eyes shiny. “Jehan -- Jehan, I’m, I’m fucking sorry. I’m such a mess --”

“Stop apologizing, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to be.”

“--you shouldn’t have to deal with me, I’m so sorry --”.

“R?” Jehan reaches around him to open the door and backs him into the apartment. “Shut the fuck up and get in my bed.” 

R blinks at him and placidly stumbles in, flopping backwards onto the bed with a squeak of protesting bedsprings and letting his head fall back to stare at the ceiling. His whole body sinks into the bed; he sighs as if even his lungs could melt into the mattress. Jehan thinks the whole concept looks lovely, but he’s got things to take care of first: he makes a face at R and tugs his hightop sneakers off him and dumps his legs on the bed.

“You’re good at putting people to bed. Do you do this a lot?”

“Oh, all the time,” Jehan assures him with a laugh. “You shouldn’t lie on your back, Joly will kill me.” 

“Sing me to sleep,” Grantaire sings off key to the ceiling. “Sing me to sleep...”

Jehan is filling a glass of water and on the phone at the same time and he holds up a hand like a parent. It just rings and rings at Ferre’s place, and he tries Courfeyrac’s instead. “Courf? Hey, I’m sorry it’s so early, you can go back to sleep, I just wanted to let you know I found R. Yeah! He’s at my place. Hmm? Yeah, pretty much. Have you heard from Ferre?” He frowns at the response. “Okay, well. Get some sleep, let me know if you hear from them. I’m gonna call Joly and -- I will! I know. Go to bed...You too.” He smiles a little. “See you tonight.” 

He leaves a quick message on Joly’s machine to the same effect; it’s morning, so most likely he’s already at the clinic. He can’t imagine having to work after last night, but Joly’s in rotations, so lack of sleep is pretty much his default state. 

Grantaire is still humming, but he’s rolled over on his side and his eyes are so close to closed that Jehan can’t see them through the sweep of his lashes. “Hey,” he says gently and crouches down to his level, shaking his shoulder and thrusting the glass of water in his face. “Drink this.” Grantaire opens his eyes enough to obediently take the glass and accept a couple of aspirin. R tosses the aspirin back without water, but when Jehan raises an eyebrow he takes a few drinks anyway. 

“Sing to me, I don’t wanna wake up on my own anymore,” he sings off kilter.

“If I sing you to sleep it won’t be something this depressing,” Jehan informs him. 

“Will you?”

“Sing to you?” Jehan considers that he probably would.

Grantaire nods into the pillow. “Just stay.” He winces. “Jehan, it’s cold...” He makes a soft noise and curls further into the bed, too tired and broken to talk.

Jehan frowns and tugs the blanket out from under R to cover him with; he kicks his shoes off and gently nudges R over so he can climb into bed.. “I’ll be right here.” His entire body wants to collapse into the mattress; he’s so tired he feels like he could disintegrate completely. But the same part of him that’s inclined to stay up all night finishing poems and holding candlelight vigils and watching meteorites is just as, or even more, motivated to stay up and make sure R falls asleep. 

He can’t figure out a song to sing and he’s not a very good singer, but he feels oddly moved to, so he just starts humming until it turns into something, some ballad full of loss and death but familiar and comforting sounding. 

Slowly, next to him, R’s shoulders relax, and he takes deeper breaths. Jehan lets himself slide down on the mattress. There’s true daylight streaming in the southeast window now, casting a beam sprinkled with dustmotes through the room and spilling over the bed. It seems so strange to watch R’s restlessness still at the touch of light, and yet, he thinks, maybe exactly right.

\----

Combeferre doesn’t wander aimlessly; when he looks for something, it’s a strategically planned attack determined equally by his prey’s nature and pure statistics, and ferreting out Enjolras from amongst his favorite places to get lost is no different. His hunt is an exhaustive remapping of the city that takes him through metro stops and side streets, personal memorials and national cemeteries and sees him well into daylight. 

Ferre’s starting to think about just stopping at the library to curl up in a corner with a book and letting Enjolras find his own way home if he wants to be stubborn. 

Still, Combeferre has never been one to give up: not on a rhythm he’s imagined up, not on a text he hasn’t managed to wrap his mind around, not on the possibility of change and certainly not on Enjolras -- and that’s how his feet find their way into the Arboretum in one last burst of inspiration.

And that’s where he spots him: still, surrounded by old Capitol columns, like some kind of statue staring unmoving over the pond with the light flaming in his hair. 

It’s a moment he would preserve in the name of beauty, if he wasn’t so worried. Instead, he sprints down the path and up the steps. Enjolras is like stone: he must hear Combeferre skid to a stop behind him, but he’s just standing still, breathing slowly as if he’s thinking about it.

“You know I’ve been looking for you all night,” Combeferre says, not a question and Enjolras says, 

“I know.”

“Then you also know you’re not going to do that again.” It’s not that Ferre isn’t thinking the rest of it -- I was scared, we were all scared and you could have been hurt and you haven’t been like this in a long time -- but pleas to Enjolras’ better judgment are largely ineffective, and they both know each other too well to need to say them. 

“I didn’t --” Enjolras finally turns to look at him. “I didn’t break any promises,” he finally says, “if you’re thinking that,” and Combeferre shakes his head. 

“I know you didn’t.” He knows he thought about it. He knows he probably spent half an hour in front of a liquor store window, or pacing some stupid corner and turning around and coming back. Ferre didn’t look for Enjolras there for a reason. Maybe because he has more trust in him than Enjolras does in himself. 

“I’ve failed you all,” he says in a resigned tone, and Combeferre would laugh if it wasn’t so painwracked. He’s not sure if Enjolras doesn’t realize how adoring his ink-stained soldiers are or if he simply has higher standards for himself than anyone on earth, but he isn’t really capable of failing them. And certainly not him: all he’s ever wanted was his friend, not some hero. 

“You can’t fail me,” he says aloud as if it’s that simple, and sits on the stairs at Enjolras' feet. “What are you talking about?”

Enjolras sits, pensively. “I --” He presses his lips together for a moment. “Grantaire was right, last night. I am scared. I don’t want to talk about what’s going on in my own neighborhood, because it’s easier to talk about people I feel...I don’t know, sorry for.” He reaches down and for the first time ‘Ferre realizes he has a whole stack of old newspapers with him, gathered from where he isn’t sure. “Look at this. Tell me what you see.”

“Um. The business section of the Times?” Combeferre looks at him. “...are we reading the Times now?”

“Last page.” He shoves a copy of the Post at him. “Arts and culture, page 20. Back of the front section in a tiny article.” He goes on, paper after paper.

As he follows the scavenger hunt Combeferre figures out what he’s talking about. “AIDS.” Even the word, still a little raw and new sounding to his mouth, sends a sharp feeling of dread through him. He sighs. “People don’t understand it. They’re scared. People in power want to act like they know what they’re talking about -- ” 

“They want,” Enjolras interrupts coldly, “for it to weed out the undesirables.” 

Was this what R had confronted him with? Or was it Lamarque who had set it off? Either way, he has to concede that he has a point. The disease has been seeping into their communities insidiously for what must be years now, inexplicable and horrifying, and yet apparently the horror isn’t enough for any real action. “That’s true,” he admits. “Gays, junkies...it’s not hurting any of the upper echelon, really.”

“Hell, it’s just eliminating people who’d never vote them into office. They’d love to let us all die. And no one will say anything about it.” Enjolras’s hands are fists against the marble. “We have to, or no one will.”

“Is that what Grantaire said?” Ferre feels a little incredulous at the idea that Grantaire might have proposed such a radical call to arms. It’s not that he doubts that R might have been personally affected in some way, and definitely not that he doubts the boy’s intelligence; he’s smart, and as passionate as you can be about being a nihilist -- it’s just that, for all the arguments they’ve had over human nature, it’s hard to grasp him being optimistic for change.

“No,” Enjolras laughs, a little bitterly. “He told me I was afraid; he told me people don’t care if we die, he told me it doesn’t matter to them if we try to seem like good people...He was right.” He shakes his head. “I’m terrified. Of who I am. Of what I don’t know. Of not being taken seriously, what the fans would say if we said the wrong thing, of myself sometimes...of what I could be.”

Combeferre takes off his glasses and cleans them anxiously. “You don’t have to be. You draw in people because they want to know you. Not some idea of you, the real you. Even if they don’t know who that is yet. They’d defend that. We all would.”

“I don’t even know who that is, ‘Ferre.” 

He sounds so sad, and tired, and Ferre squeezes his shoulder affectionately. “I do.”

“Jesus, fucking Grantaire, of all people...” he says, rubbing his eyes. 

“Would it be wrong of me to say you may be the only one left besides Grantaire that’s surprised that what he thinks matters to you?” Combeferre asks mildly. 

“I wasn’t sure last night if I was going to hit him or kiss him,” Enjolras says, sounding totally lost. “I’m not sure what I wanted him to do. I...he confuses me.”

“I think I’m glad neither one happened, considering how much of a mess this morning was.”

“He would be one of the best of us if he ever deigned to give a shit,” Enjolras says with feeling. “I mean, the shit he says sometimes, and you know it’s just bullshit, he’s just talking for the hell of it. But imagine if he cared...if he believed...”

“He believes in you.”

Enjolras looks truly unsettled. “That’s what he said, last night. That he knew I believed and he believed in me. It...kinda fucked with my head.”

“Sometimes people need a hero, a leader before they can mobilize themselves,,” Combeferre says and quietly omits the fact that Enjolras has become a symbol for far more than Grantaire; he has other things he’s thinking about. “E, you’re not doing this to make Grantaire care about something, are you?”

Enjolras looks horrified. “Fuck no. I’m doing this because he was right, and I’m doing this because even he doesn’t think we have a chance, but I’m doing this because we have to. We have to start saying something. I might not know who I am, but I know how to fight. I just don’t know who else will want to.”

“If you show up at the Musain tonight and say this, everyone will listen.”

“I just -- Ferre, right now I feel like a fucking liar, an inauthentic sellout piece of shit, and I’m expecting anyone to listen, and more than that I’m expecting that anyone wants to come have this stamped on their forehead with me. And I don’t want you to tell me people will follow me because I want to hear it.”

“I won’t lie,” Combeferre says openly. “It’s a little frightening. There will be people who don’t want to stick around for it, won’t be comfortable going to shows if you’re telling people AIDS isn’t a goddamn joke and you’re talking about gay people. There’ll be people who assume we’re sick. Won’t even want to be around us.”

“Yeah.”

“Part of me thinks, maybe it’s better to come at this slowly -- y’know, just stop laughing off the fag jokes and make it more obvious, and people will come around...since they like us already, they’ll realize there’s shit that has to change. That we’re not just some invisible portion of the population, that they care.” 

“Being gay isn’t the problem,” Enjolras says. “I mean, it is, but it’s not. I’m not just talking about being some mainstream sanitized inoffensive guy that oh yeah, fucks dudes, or in my case doesn’t, even. That they don’t even have to think about. And they won’t. They won’t think about it, they won’t talk about it, and they definitely won’t think that we might be sick. They’ll never even have to think what would happen if that was happening to someone they know unless they’re someone who already fucking cares.”

“If you believe that people are so insistent on not caring, how do you think anyone who doesn’t already care will stay and listen?” It’s not that Combeferre disagrees. It’s true he believes -- maybe hopes for -- evolution as a rule. Personally he thinks the only reason change is possible is because people are intrinsically good; that change is possible through changing minds and hearts as well as society, that revolution is even possible because it touches the part of people that is prone to goodness. Whereas Enjolras tends to believe that most people are selfish, and have to be forced to even see what change would benefit them, and that it’s the responsibility of the few willing to act to destroy the systems in place that encourage that.

It leads to a lot of questioning of motives, is the point.

“I don’t know,” Enjolras admits. “But I think some will. And we have to try. If we don’t -- what are we fucking good for? Why are we even --” He runs his hands through his hair, leaning down as if his whole body might collapse against the weight of it. When he raises his head, it’s with a new focus in his eyes. “If they want to walk away, we’ll make it big enough that they’ll have to see it.”

\----

And that’s how they end up at the Musain, with Enjolras standing on a chair throwing a stack of newspaper dramatically to the floor, yelling, “This isn’t news? This isn’t a story? Our friends, our family, our people dying right here in this city? Well, I think it’s time we raised our fucking voices.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Quotes in this chapter during the Jehan/Grantaire quotewar.  
> There are two ways to become unhappy: to desire what you don't have or to have finally gotten what you have desired --Louys.
> 
> then:  
> Hemingway (x2)  
> Bukowski  
> Shelley  
> e.e. cummings


	6. Things to Believe In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _'People are dying. Our friends. Our defenders, if Joly is right about Lamarque. Our lovers, maybe. Us, soon enough.'_
> 
> In which Enjolras has a new purpose and Cosette has a new secret.

Enjolras stands in the corner, unconsciously falling into an at ease position, hands behind his back, feet planted, watching as people come in and out of the cafe down the hall. He can feel every sense alert for the voices and movements of his comrades.

He’s been here all day since Combeferre caught up to him. While the rest of them, presumably, went to work or school or just slept -- called each other, passed news back and forth -- he’s been keeping himself fueled on coffee and news. _No one’s going to show up after that stunt you pulled_ , the voice in his head snarled (and it sounds just a little too much like his father to be comfortable). _Why should they?_

“Sit down,” Ferre tells him, flipping through a book and tapping his foot to an unheard beat. “You look like a nervous groom.”

“I’m being wed to the revolution,” Enjolras says back tersely, “and I think it’s leaving me at the altar.”

“Good god, you sound pretentious. Save it for the lyrics. And have some faith. They’ll come.”

It’s not the first time Enjolras has envied Combeferre his faith in people. He feels like he’s at a performance. Just like this really is a show: waiting for the crowd, or lack thereof. Only this would be worse, because it would be his best friends, not a handful of acquaintances.

But if they do come -- what will he say? What could he possibly even start to explain?

Something, irrevocably, has been changed in him by this night. The fight with Grantaire last night, the hospitalization of Alderman Lamarque, his confession to Combeferre this morning. As he walked the streets last night it was as if he could see nothing else, everyone he passed another potential discarded victim; his own body so infuriatingly mortal among streets that seem eternal sometimes.

Grantaire may be right that no one cares what they do, how they act. But he won’t accept that he can’t leave a mark.

 

He hears Joly before he sees him. Bossuet is bickering with him, his low sarcastic rebuttals a steady counterbeat against Joly’s nervous, strained outbursts. Enjolras lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

“If it’s that bad, I can take you home,” Bossuet is saying.

“It doesn’t matter,” Joly says in a sepulchral tone, “It doesn’t matter if I’m here or there. I might as well be among friends.”

“Joly is on the brink of death,” Bossuet announces to the room, coming over to drop all his things on a chair and twisting a half-smile at Enjolras and Ferre. “Again.” His tone is lighter than his expression.

“In that case I appreciate your coming even more, Joly,” Enjolras tells the medical student seriously, stepping forward to pull him into a sturdy embrace. Joly is dying of a new infection every day, but it doesn't make his fear any less real. In any case, he hasn’t slept for a day and a half, and has managed in the meantime to avoid pulling any ridiculous histrionics like Enjolras did.

“You shouldn't -- I might be --” Joly fumbles. He ends up saying, “of course I’m here,” and his returned hug is just a little tighter than is purely necessary; Enjolras doesn’t pull away from it, just looks over his shoulder at Bossuet, who manages a tight smile.

“Have you heard anything about Lamarque?” Enjolras asks, and Joly pulls back to ruffle a hand through his hair and make a face.

“I’ve heard everything and then some,” he admits. “It’s not good.” His face falls further. “They’re talking about brain swelling, and...”

He realizes with a start that people have gathered at the sound of this conversation; that most of his friends are here.

“AIDS,” he says and looks at them, at the uncomfortable shifting that precipitates, “they’re talking about AIDS,” and that moment of _unsettling_ brings the sense of purpose back to him like a bolster: familiar, strong.

Joly nods, once, a brief confirmation.

"And what would it mean, if it was,” he says, voice raised, and he can see the looks flicker between them. “Does it change anything he’s done? Discount it, overshadow it?” He steps back to see them all. “This fucking virus: We keep it in the shadows like some ghoul, some monster under the bed, something shameful we can’t speak the name of and that’s what they want, for it to pick us off one by one so we aren’t a threat anymore without ever having to do anything about it.”

“And yeah, I say ‘we’. Me. This band, this family, this community. All the junkies and queers and freaks we fight for until it gets just a little too close to home. Until we might not be taken seriously. Until it’s something we’re afraid of. You want to walk away from that you can, but I can’t do it anymore. I won’t. This is my life and I’m fucking scared and I’m angry. We all know someone who’s gotten sick. Don’t we?” He scans his friends, the conflict on their faces.

“More than one.” Jehan breaks the silence, fierce and hurting, and Enjolras’ attention is drawn to where their friend has recently arrived, standing in the doorway. “And not just _sick.”_ He’s got an arm around Grantaire, who’s leaning, watching: he’s got green plastic sunglasses on and hood pulled up, but looking at him all the same.

Enjolras’ heart doubletimes a little: this fight has been pulled straight from Grantaire’s lips and, as deeply as he feels the need to say something he can already hear the sarcastic accusations that will be slung at him. But someone has to fight, and he’s not afraid to admit his mistakes: just to accept defeat as inevitable.

“More than one,” he agrees with Jehan, louder. “People are dying. Our friends. Our defenders, if Joly is right about Lamarque. Our lovers, maybe. _Us,_ soon enough. And where do we hear about it? Who’s got a plan? The mayor? The President?" That gets a laugh, a derisive shout, and he boldens, stepping back and up onto a chair to throw his gathered newspapers and let them scatter like snow. “AIDS doesn’t even make the front page. It’s a press conference joke. Well, fuck that.

“This isn’t news? This isn’t a story? Our friends, our family, our _people_ dying right here in this city? Well, I think it’s time we raised our fucking voices.”

He takes a breath then, his heart still pounding in his chest, his face hot, and looks at them all.

From the back Bahorel says loudly, “Fuck yeah,” and the rest are nodding then, all talking at once, and Enjolras kind of wants to collapse.

 

Instead he jumps down, lets the multiple conversations wash over him, always a little awestruck by how immediately impassioned everyone he knows is, how vibrant and diverse and interesting, how much he loves them. 

Courfeyrac steps to his side, always the lieutenant, and says, “You know, you can just bring _lyrics_ next time you have a revelation, instead of disappearing, or making speeches."

“We’re going to lose people,” he tells him quietly. “I mean, this is -- fuck, I was just waiting for someone to walk.”

“I told you, they love you.” Courf glances over Enjolras’ head and he can tell he’s catching Ferre’s eye behind him, but he ignores both the vote of confidence _and_ the knowing glance.

“I don’t know,” he waves his hand, “this doesn’t exactly affect everyone. I thought they should have warning.” 

“It does affect everyone,” Courfeyrac says. “You were right: even the straight ones know someone. And besides, you can’t claim to hate the upper echelon without standing up for the people they shit all over.”

“You would think,” Enjolras snorts. If only that were true.

“Well, I can’t.” Courf shrugs. “So are we a, what are they calling them, queercore band now?”

“You wish. Hey, so where’s your boyfriend, anyway?”

“Oh, busy stalking some girl.”

\---

“Cosette! It’s nearly dark.”

“I know, papa.” Cosette can’t hide a little irritation in her voice as she calls back.  “I’ll be in soon.” It’s not that she doesn’t expect it. Her father is, possibly, the most overprotective person on earth.

She understands it. She was a lonely, hurt little girl when he adopted her. She had clung on to him, this savior, this new font of as much affection as she could stand. But it had taken her time to feel deserving of his love, to do what he asked without question because she could trust it was good for her, not because he might punish her -- and she knows he knows that. She knows there’s a part of him that still needs to know she believes that.

He has no one, no living family as far as she knows; she’s heard nephews mentioned once, but like everything else, they got cut off by a waved hand halfway through. She’s not sure where they are or if they even exist. She can’t imagine that he’d turn away family, with the reverence with which he speaks about her and her mother, though her total knowledge of her mother is that she loved her and spoke of her often, and that she looks like her, and that she died too soon. He tells Cosette almost every day that she is his everything, that he would do anything for her.

 _Except let her leave the yard unattended_ , she thinks bitterly.

For the whole of her life, she’s told herself he’s so protective because he loves her. Because she’s had enough harm in her life, as he’s told her so many times. Because he’s lonely, because he’s scared for her. He loves her, he takes care of her, and that should be enough.

It _has_ been enough.

Now she can’t imagine how it has been. For the last year and half, the feeling of being trapped has snuck in, first subtly and then like a flashing light in her face every day. She feels it like something bursting in her, the need to get away, the hopelessness that she never will. She’s 17. Almost 18, almost old enough to vote, fight, lease an apartment, more than old enough to drive a car. It isn’t unreasonable to go out once in a while without telling him. Even if she had to tell him. She knows he still sees her as a child, a victim, in danger -- but she isn’t a child and she refuses to be a victim anymore.

She can’t be a little bird in a cage forever, happy just to be fed. One day she has to fly, even if that means there will be hawks and cats she has to be afraid of.

And so she’s sitting by the fence with a book to hide her glances out. Since this morning she hasn’t been able to shake the unmistakable sound of someone’s sneakers hitting ground, the conviction that someone has been watching her. Her stomach twists with it, what it could mean, who it could be.

She should be more cautious, should be scared, should say something. But that would mean giving up the only thing that is _hers_ and hers alone, this knowledge, this hope. If her father knew it would be over. They’d have more security put in, a different fence, even move again. It could be nothing; it could never happen again, and for now it feels good to wonder.

Which doesn’t stop her from spooking when someone says her name from the other side of the fence; she instinctively grabs at her book and jumps to her feet, her heart pounding, blood rushing to her face.

“Fuck, I’m sorry. Um. Hello?”

“Hello?” She takes a step closer and sees him, hands wrapped around the ironwrought bars of the fence. The student.

They’ve been running into each other for months now, walking through the campus as she and her father so often do on their walks around town. For a solid month he didn’t notice her at all, involved in his books, but she’d been charmed by his constant intense distracted demeanor, curly hair always tousled, the army jacket he wore like a uniform. When he’d started looking back, then it had become a game, subtle glances, smiles, how close they could get without her father figuring it out.

“It’s _you_ ,” is all she can think of to say, because she had never expected anything more to happen, to be able to happen. “How did you --”

“One of my friends figured out where you lived and showed me.” He makes a face at himself. “I just, I wanted to talk to you. I guess it’s a little weird...”

Cosette allows herself a step closer, putting the book down. “No,” she says, though it is nothing _but_ weird. “How did you know my name?”

“I didn’t,” he admits, and runs a hand through his hair, flushing a little. “I heard your father calling.” He smiles a little. “That is your name? Cosette?” He says it carefully, gently as though he might do damage to it, and she thrills a little. Even hearing his voice seems a little taboo; she never thought she’d be able to actually talk to him.

“Yes,” she says with a smile and wraps her hands around a bar to lean on, her face close to his hands. “What’s yours?”

“Marius Pontmercy,” he says, tentative like he might answer the question wrong somehow.

“Marius,” she says and enjoys the way it feels in her mouth. “It suits you.”

“I hope so; it’s the only one I’ve got.” He grins and looks back behind her at the house. “Am I keeping you?”

She rolls her eyes. “He can wait. You came all this way to talk to me. What did you want to talk to me about?”

“Anything,” he says too quickly and Cosette grins. “Anything you like. Tell me something.”

“My father never lets me out of here?” she suggests. “I don’t know, I’m not that interesting. I like reading. I hate studying.” She looks away, suddenly feeling the pressure to be unique. “I love to sing,” she finally says. “I sing in the shower, when I’m alone with headphones on, just walking around. I think maybe I’d like to perform, you know -- theater? but I don’t know, I don’t think I’m any good.”

“I’m sure you’re great,” Marius tells her and she laughs.

“You don’t know me yet,” she teases.

“I have faith.”

There is nothing even slightly joking about that, and it both makes her want to cry and is a little hard to swallow. “Tell me something about yourself, Marius Pontmercy,” she says, resting her head on the fence. They’re close enough they might as well be touching; she can feel the warmth of him in contrast to the cool air.

“I don’t know what to say,” he admits, leaning back and pulling himself back in. “I’m studying law. I work at a publisher’s, to pay the rent.” He chews on his lip a little. “I love music -- my best friend’s in a band, it’s sort of a thing -- and movies, and reading everything. I’d like to be a civil rights lawyer, maybe. Or be a public defender, if not that. To fight against injustice somehow, anyway.”

Cosette is staring at him a little, she can feel it: there’s something striking about someone self-defining as wanting to fight against injustice, about finding the hardest, least well paid version of a lucrative job because it’s the right thing to do.

Marius flushes under the scrutiny. “I feel like I’m saying all the wrong things.”

“No, it’s beautiful,” she says, and she leans up to tug at his jacket (the same army jacket she’s been staring at for months, olive and worn in and _his_ , now suddenly under her fingers), to pull him closer.

“ _Cosette!”_

She flinches, tenses at her name being yelled, a too-deep instinct to shake or even admit to; seconds later her brain has clicked into _father_ and _safe_ and even _annoying_.

Marius is watching her. He touches her hand very gently and says, quiet, “I’ll come back. If you want me to.”

Something defiant flares in her. She leans up and kisses him, impulsively, through the bars; he laughs in surprise and kisses her back. “Come back, then,” she tells him, then concedes, “I better go before my father figures out.” She steps away reluctantly.

As she’s walking away something occurs to her, and she turns back. “Marius?” He’s picking his way out of the bushes, but he stops and looks back smiling anyway. “It was you in the tree this morning, right?”

He laughs, puzzled. “No, but-- I think that must have been Eponine. My friend, who found you for me.”

Everything seems to slow. “Eponine,” she echoes, nodding. It can’t be -- that’s got to be a coincidence. ( _Because there are a lot of Eponines in this city_ , her mind taunts, and she ignores it,)

He’s saying something already about seeing her in a few days, and she waves and smiles through the blood rushing in her ears, and her father is calling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, it's been a long time since I've finished a chapter. Hopefully not so long on the next one! If you're a still-reading type thank you <3


End file.
